Researchers focused on 20,066 participants in the U.K. who were recruited via mail and took part in the study across three winters between January 2011 and March 2013. About 16,000 participants received access to an automated web-based intervention that encouraged hand washing, monitored hand-washing behaviour, offered customised feedback, reinforced helpful attitudes and addressed negative beliefs, according to the study, led by Paul Little of the University of Southampton.

Researchers found 51% of individuals with access to the web programme reported one or more incidence of respiratory tract infection with 59% of those without the programme reporting one or more RTI episode.

Study findings also addressed the impact of hand washing on germ transmission to and from household members, with results showing a 15% to 25% relative reduction in infections and a 10% reduction in doctor visits and antibiotic prescription. Researchers deem those results crucial because of the encumbrance of RTI and the risks of antibiotic resistance.

Although the positive outcomes from the Web intervention programme were not measured on people outside of participants’ households, researchers believe the effects would have been even greater had they been included, according to the study.

Professor Chris van Weel of the department of primary and community care at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands commented on the research, noting how technology can be an excellent tool in healthcare. Influenza can be highly contagious, van Weel wrote, and the risk of transmission exists wherever people meet, such as work, school or public transportation. The study shows the importance of a people-based primary healthcare approach, he wrote.

“Little and colleagues deserve praise for their ability to preserve the real-life environment of busy primary care in the research setting of their trial, which facilitates the translation of the study into routine practice,” van Weel concluded. “Their use of the Internet to reach households, inform and instruct individuals about hand washing, and maintain its application is innovative. This approach was founded on important values of general practice and primary care: its relation to a defined community population, with the family and household setting as a key focus, and empowerment of people to care for their own health as a core objective.”